Mediagazer: An Interview With Jack Shafer (Dylan Byers/Adweek)

5:00 PM ET, August 25, 2011

Top News:

Dylan Byers / Adweek:

An Interview With Jack Shafer — Slate media critic and Press Box columnist Jack Shafer lost his job on Wednesday. He was, along with three others, part of a round of layoffs at the online news magazine. The news was met with much consternation: Just that day, an article praising Shafer as a …

Discussion: The Awl and FishbowlNY

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:

Twilight of the Media Critics — Yesterday, the already-shrunken world of media reporting lost its two grandest figures: Jim Romenesko, the quiet man who singlehandedly set the agenda, like a front page editor for all media news (semi-retiring, by choice); and Slate's Jack Shafer …

Mark Lisheron / American Journalism Review:
A Fearless Media Critic

Discussion: Erik Wemple, Future of Journalism, Poynter, The Daily Caller, Media Nation, Future Journalism Project, The Hillman Foundation blogs and LA Observed

Dylan Byers / Adweek:
Slate Lays Off Jack Shafer, Several Others

Discussion: Mixed Media, Washington Post, On Media's Blog, Slate, Poynter, @jackshafer, Felix, NetNewsCheck Latest, The New York Observer, @antderosa, American Journalism Review, New York Magazine, paidContent and @dangillmor

CmdrTaco / Slashdot:

Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda Resigns From Slashdot 77 — from the steve-got-front-cutsies dept. — After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it's finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college.

Discussion: Underwire, TechCrunch, Computerworld, This is my next, Computerworld, ExtremeTech, @ericries, ReadWriteWeb, The Tech Report, ShortFormBlog, MetaFilter and The Daily Caller, more at Techmeme »

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Slashdot and CmdrTaco — the end of another geek era

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Mediaite and AdPulp

Joe Flint / Company Town:

For Murdoch, media has often been about friends and influence — In 1996, the teenage son of a prominent political figure in Washington, D.C., got suspended from his tony prep school. — Not wanting to see himself, his family or his boss embarrassed by his son's actions, the father scrambled to keep the incident out of the news.

Discussion: Stop Big Media News

Bloomberg:

‘Today’ Promotes Curry to Hot Seat as Surging ABC Closes Gap — NBC's “Today” show, making its biggest talent change since Katie Couric left in 2006, heads into the new television season with its 15-year dominance of morning TV challenged by a resurgent ABC.

Discussion: MediaPost and TVNewser

Jenna Goudreau / Forbes.com:
Ann Curry: 'I Didn't Ask To Be Co-Anchor Of Today'

Discussion: TVNewser

Dan Gillmor / Guardian:

The ghostwritten op-ed: an unacceptable deception | Dan Gillmor — If I'd fail a journalism student for a paper written by another, why does the media give a pass to the rich and powerful? — My former employer, the San Jose Mercury News, recently ran an opinion column …

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's …

Ki Mae Heussner / Adweek:

AOL Huddles With Top M&A Team — AOL has retained two of the biggest names in mergers and acquisitions, law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and investment banking company Allen & Company LLC. A team from those firms, including Wachtell, Lipton founding partner Martin Lipton …

Discussion: Between the Lines Blog and SAI

Alysia Santo / CJR:

From Commenter to Contributor — On some blogs, taking the comment section seriously can mean hiring people from it — During a string of “boring, terrible” office jobs, Gabriel Delahaye started to regularly comment on Gawker's articles. He wasn't just doing this for fun.

Discussion: Poynter

Chris Ariens / TVNewser:

Hurricane Irene Keeps Reporters & Forecasters on the Move — TV news anchors, correspondents and meteorologists may not have to go far from their New York headquarters to cover Hurricane Irene as the Category 3 storm barrels toward the East Coast. — With the 11amET advisory …

Discussion: Gawker, Forbes, FishbowlNY, Broadcasting & Cable, The Wire and PC Magazine

Sarah McBride / Reuters:

Social media magazine Flipboard pursues TV, films — (Reuters) - Internet video is getting even more crowded. Flipboard, the social media magazine whose investors include actor Ashton Kutcher, plans to add television shows and films to move it beyond the online articles that it offers now.

Discussion: Mashable! and MacStories

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Making a market: How ProPublica blends news that wins Pulitzers with news that wins followers — Go to the ProPublica homepage right now, and you'll see a mix of timely content whose headlines involve words like “guide.” And “FAQ.” And “Why X.” And “What is Y?” And “Z: we separate fact from fiction.”

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of loss — Editor's Note: Each week, Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of news for the Lab. — The Bay Area News Group's announcement Tuesday caused a few ripples, and some head-scratching.

Discussion: Knight Foundation

Erika Fry / CJR:

Money Talks — Why do we never hear from the working class on op-ed pages? — Last week, eighty-year-old billionaire Warren Buffett whipped up a media frenzy when, in an op-ed for The New York Times he urged the government to “stop coddling” super-rich folks such as himself. Tax us, he pled.

Discussion: Journalism.org, USA Today and The Huffington Post

Tom Grubisich / Street Fight:

Why Hyperlocal News Is Better Than Ever — Hyperlocal news is on the threshold of a period of impressive achievement. I'm not talking about revisiting the wishful thinking of the previous decade, when we were regaled with dithyrambics about “grassroots” and “citizen” journalism.

Ellie Behling / eMedia Vitals:

Paywall success stories: Three newspapers using the metered model — About a month ago we looked at traffic numbers from newspapers that put up paywalls in the last year. Despite the general assumption that charging for digital content will cause a drop in traffic, it's not always the case.

Adam / One Man & His Blog:

Nostalgia is not a viable approach to journalism (part 267) — Yesterday, a rather depressing story about journalism training appeared on the Press Gazette site. It wasn't depressing because of the headline finding: … As Joanna Geary pointed out in the comments, that has a definite “Pope revealed to be Catholic” element.

Discussion: newsplexer and AndyDickinson.net